Sunday, 17 April 2011

It’s been a while since I’ve tried photographing Rabbits so I thought I would have a go this weekend. I’ve normally found them quite difficult to do so as they tend to be nervous and, since small, you need to get close to them to get a decent size image in the viewfinder.

I sat downwind at a distance, from a active warren and made myself reasonably comfortable (there were nettles everywhere). It was around 30 minutes with just the occasional head popping up and checking me out – I didn’t try and hide myself, just kept a low profile – when they eventually came out, one at a time at first then suddenly there was around eight. Looking at them they seemed to be quite young one which is why maybe they were willing to tolerate me so much as they wandered around, though they were still easily spooked, as on one occasion a Crow flew over and they darted back into the tunnels.

From a photographic point of view I found it quite difficult due to the lighting. The Rabbits would move from bright sunshine giving me 1/2000 to shade at 1/320 and played havoc with the metering. I also found after an hour and a half my arms were aching a bit with the weight of lens and camera although the end of the lens was largely resting between my knees I was still holding the bulk of the weight in an awkward position.